


raising cain

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Series: sins of our fathers [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything fell into place for them and now it might just fall into pieces. </p><p>Takes place 12 years after 'a paper house'. John is 29, Sherlock is 28.  The year is 1997.</p><p>Warning: contains mentions of child abuse and violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read and said such kind things about this series. I appreciate every last one of you.
> 
> Special thanks to the splendid Nelly for her tremendous beta read and britpick. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

“John, make her stop!” Sherlock shouted from the kitchen when John emerged from the bedroom, still buttoning up his shirt. Their new flat had an inescapable scent of mould that always put John off his breakfast. 

“Why? What’s she doing?” John asked, leaning in the doorway. “Good morning, Harry.” 

“Morning, Johnny,” she ran a hand through her hair until it all stuck up on end like a hedgehog. “Could you please remind Sherlock that I’m an adult and as such don’t require his approval for any decisions I want to make?” 

“Very mature to use John as an intermediary,” Sherlock tilted back in his chair. “That’ll show me.” 

“Fuck off,” she said through a yawn. 

“Can someone catch me up on what I missed by choosing morning hygiene over sniping?” John headed for the kettle. Empty, of course. He held it under the tap to refill. 

“I’m joining the military,” Harry announced around a mouthful of toast. “I think it’ll be good for me.” 

“Sorry, what?” Blindly, John set the kettle down. “I could have sworn you just said you were going to go into a combat zone and let people shoot at you.” 

“Don’t be a drama queen. I’d be going in as an avionics engineer- not exactly on the frontlines. I’ve got all the right qualifications.” She pointed a square of toast at Sherlock. “You’ve only got yourself to blame, you know. I wasn’t even interested in physics until you built that Rube Goldberg monstrosity with me.” 

“What about uni?” John took the third chair at the table and stole Sherlock’s tea. 

“I’m not doing so well.” She muttered into her cup. 

“Oh.” John glanced at Sherlock, who was tilting so far backwards in his chair it could qualify as a circus act. “How did that happen? You did fine last term.” 

“I got distracted. Parties. Girls. You know how it is.” She snorted. “Or ok, you don’t since you were boring and practically married the whole time. But trust me. I have to get out. I want to do something different. Something interesting. I’ve always liked helicopters.” 

“What’s Mum think of all this?” 

“She doesn’t know yet.” Harry shrugged. “I was more afraid of telling you guys than her anyway.” 

“As you should have been,” Sherlock grumbled. 

“Look, I can hardly stop you, but it’s a big decision.” That sounded properly adult and reasonable. “How long have you been thinking about this?” 

“Months. I wake up and I know I’m in the wrong place. I want to do something useful, something interesting.” She frowned at Sherlock. “I thought you’d understand that.” 

“I understand that you want to run away from easily correctable problems.” The front legs of the chair hit the ground with a loud bang, followed by the rest of Sherlock as he stalked back to the bedroom. John stole his abandoned cup of tea. 

“God, I want to murder him sometimes.” 

“Get in line,” John sighed, “it starts here and ends at the Channel. You know it’s only because it means you’ll be away. He’ll miss you terribly. So will I.” 

“It wouldn’t kill him to say it.” She rolled her eyes. “Or maybe it would. Anyway, you’ll be alright with this?” 

“I’ll need some time to get used to the idea of my baby sister running around in fatigues, but yeah.” He patted her hand. “I’m a little jealous actually. It sounds like a great adventure.” 

“Like you don’t have enough of those.”

John smiled thinly, firmly not thinking about The Great Argument of ‘95. He remembered coming home with glossy army brochures and a plan on the tip of his tongue. It had ended in the kind of bitter standoff that John could probably have expected if he actually had gone to war. The brochures had been reduced to ash along with any illusions John had about the exact nature of their relationship. The only consolation John had was that he owned Sherlock just as thoroughly as Sherlock owned him. 

Lost in their separate thoughts, John and Harry finished their tea together in silence. The shower turned on, the pipes groaning through the walls. When the water shut off, John hefted himself up and went to track down his keys and wallet. Harry flopped onto the pull out couch, and turned on the television. 

“Don’t you have a lecture?” John tracked down his beeper a pile of reports. “You can’t just quit in the middle because you’ve got a back up plan.” 

“It’s not a backup plan. It’s the actual plan.” She pulled the duvet back over her head. “I’m going over to Mum’s tonight to tell her. Tomorrow, I start the paperwork.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” He reached for his coat as Sherlock strode back into the living room, somehow already perfectly dry and neatly dressed. John had given up trying to figure out that magic trick a long time ago.

“No.” She pulled the duvet down far enough to make a face at Sherlock. “See? John approves.” 

“John would agree to anything if you pouted at him properly,” Sherlock snapped, holding John’s coat open for him. “That doesn’t make it a sound decision.”

“Thanks for that vote of confidence.” John shrugged into his coat, pressing a kiss to the fingers of Sherlock’s left hand when it lingered on his shoulder. “I’m not that susceptible.” 

“You are. It’s one of your more useful qualities.” A hand at the small of his back propelled him outwards onto the street. 

“You’re brimming with the milk of human kindness today,” John sighed, matching Sherlock’s long ground eating stride with the quick double time he’d perfected. 

They stopped just long enough for John to buy a paper. It would go unread, yet he liked to indulge in the little tradition. He’d leave it in the staff room for everyone to pick over while they drank the terrible coffee in between bouts of chaos. The rest of the walk was filled with Sherlock’s quiet hum of observation, the background patter that made up the soundtrack of John’s life. 

They ducked into New Scotland Yard via the sabotaged door Sherlock had rigged up for illicit smoke breaks and escapes within his first week as a constable. They didn’t really need to use it, but the tiny defiance against the authority of the grave building started their day off on the right note. 

Up three flights of stairs that reeked of mildew, down a dismal yellowing hallway that dead ended in a glass door with ‘Cold Case Unit’ printed in block black letters across it. The door swung open into the labyrinth of offices, wires and humming electronics. Jennifer was already at her desk, fingers flying over a keyboard as she piled through paperwork. 

“Brummer case?” John picked at the top of the file and she slapped at his hand. 

“I’m nearly finished putting it to bed, Doc. Don’t you dare get me out of order now.” 

“Do you want help? I don’t have anything on yet today.” 

“Don’t be so sure.” She gave him a half-smile. “There were suits in here earlier, behind a closed door. I think there’s a live one coming in.” 

The door to Lestrade’s office swung wide open. The man himself followed, suit wrinkled and tie long gone. He blinked blearily around the office, nodding grimly when he spotted John by the desk. 

“Meeting in fifteen minutes!” Lestrade barked. “And for the love of God, someone put on a fresh pot of coffee!” 

Their meetings were held in the break room around the much stained and abused table. The entirety of the staff could still be counted on a single hand, but they managed to make the room feel crowded with sheer volume of personality. Lestrade took the head of the table, a dossier in hand. Sherlock and John took up one side, Jennifer and their resident tech wizard Alistair took the other. 

Jennifer was technically on loan from Violent Crimes, but her ruthless competence and immunity to Sherlock’s particular brand of madness had already made her a vital asset to the team. Alistair had been Lestrade’s project. Fueled entirely by caffeine, Doctor Who and fast food, he could hack through high security clearances with frightening ease then have a nervous breakdown over a hangnail. He’d solved three cases in the week trial period with the department, then sobbed messily on Lestrade’s shoulder out of sheer exhaustion. The IT department had given him over gratefully the minute the request came through. 

“This case is big right now.” Lestrade said, opening the folder. “So we have to act fast. Homicide in 1993, staged to look like an execution. Key pieces of evidence went missing at several points in the investigation that have only just been recovered.” 

“An internal accomplice,” Sherlock drawled, rolling a pen between his fingers. “That’s why you were up all night.” 

“We already know what happened there,” Lestrade flipped through the folder. “Two corrupt officers were hiring themselves out as assassins, then stealing any evidence that turned up. The first one committed suicide eight years before our murder, but his accomplice was active until just two weeks ago. One of his intended victims got him. There was a full confession laid out in his will along with a direction to a storage facility that had all the missing evidence.” 

“Why would he keep it?” Jennifer asked, scribbling on a yellow legal pad. “If they were covering something up, wouldn’t it be better to get rid of it?” 

“Not our problem,” Lestrade said swiftly before Sherlock could open his mouth. “Moran and Donnell belong to Internal Investigations now. What we need to focus on is the recovered evidence for our case.” 

Moran. John bit into his bottom lip. Under the table, Sherlock kicked at John’s foot. When he caught John’s attention he gave a quick abbreviated shake to this head. Not here, right. John put on a mild, blank expression. He could panic about it later. 

“How do we know it wasn’t one of their kills?” Alistair reached for the sugar, pouring it into his oily black coffee. 

“Wrong gun. Wrong kind of victim too. They worked for organized crime. Our victims don’t have any ties to anything that sophisticated.” Lestrade peeled a photo out of the dossier. “This is our crime scene.” 

All of them, except for Alistair, leaned in. The shot captured the two victims each with a gunshot wound through the back of the head, lying on the linoleum floor of a small kitchen. The photo was overexposed, giving the blood a florescent look and washing away any real detail of the bodies. 

“Married couple, early twenties,” Sherlock’s eyes flew over the picture, soaking in things that John could only guess at. “They didn’t live in this flat.” 

“Right,” Lestrade didn’t even miss a beat, used to Sherlock’s piercing deductions. “The flat wasn’t leased to anyone when they were murdered there. It’s let fully furnished. Our victims might have thought their killer lived there.” 

“A trap.” Sherlock mused.

“Exactly. Mark and Darlene Westin. He designed props for the theatre. She was a singer, did some West End choral work and gave private lessons. They met through mutual friends and got married in....1985.” Lestrade confirmed, flipping through the papers. “They had one child, a boy, born in 1989. We never found any evidence that he was even in the flat at the time of the murder, but he was last seen with Mrs. Westin the night before. She picked him up from nursery later than usual. Plastered the kid’s face all over the news for a few weeks, but they never turned up hide or hair of him. ” 

“Dead?” Alistair swallowed half the cup of coffee in one go. 

“Probably,” Jennifer sighed. “Damn. When do we get the rest of the evidence?” 

“Within the hour. Are the boards clear from the Brummer case?” 

“I’ll get on it.” She swept out. “Come on Alistair, you can hold my papers.” 

“I’m not your lackey,” he grumbled and followed her out to the huge chalkboards that were covered in theories, magnets and paper. 

“There’s a lot of pressure from the higher ups, boys,” Lestrade grimaced. “Sherlock, you’ve got to play by the book. There are already two dirty cops attached to this one.” 

“I’m hardly dirty just because I can’t abide by bureaucratic nonsense.” 

“I’m serious, Sherlock. Not a hair out of place. This could cost us the department and you’ve worked too hard to throw it away because you have to cut procedural corners. It’s one case, one time that I’m asking.” Lestrade turned to John. “That goes for you too, Doc.” 

“Got it.” John smiled and if it was a little weak, Lestrade didn’t seem to notice. 

“Are we done here?” Sherlock demanded. 

“We’re done.” 

John followed Sherlock out of the staff room, down the hall and into the back room that served both as John’s office and an exam room. It wasn’t set up to do full autopsies, but they usually didn’t have full bodies to work with. John found the piecemeal remains soothing in an odd way and some of them lingered on from past cases, never quite making it back into evidence bags. Sherlock had purloined an entire skull at one point and it rested now on top of John’s filing cabinet, listening to their low conversation. 

“I’m fucked,” he groaned, leaning against the closed door. “What are the odds?” 

“Calm down.” Sherlock swung up to sit on the work table, tucking himself neatly between two pans full of finger bones. “They won’t be investigating Moran’s death. It was clearly a suicide.” 

“Except we both know it wasn’t!” 

“None of the evidence that would prove that to the contrary remains. No autopsy was ever done, very few photos were taken. It was cut and dry at the time. It’s his crimes they’ll be interested in and even those only minimally. Donnell was active for far longer and more recently.” 

“But what if-” 

“There’s nothing to question. Put it out of your head.” Sherlock waved a hand. “I need you here with me. Are you here?” 

“Yeah.” John took a long deep breath then let it out. “I’m here.” 

“Good, because the evidence has arrived.” 

The evidence proved to be ten boxes filled to the brim with the contents of the scene, neatly stacked to the side of one of the chalkboards. Jennifer and John opened the first two while Lestrade and Sherlock marked out the dimensions of the kitchen onto the floor with duct tape. Alistair plucked out all the handwritten reports and box of magnets, carefully lining them up by date. 

Slowly, the kitchen came together, rejected crash test dummies posed as the victims carefully redressed in their stiff, bloodied clothing. Using the photographs, John marked out the blood splatter trajectory with red yarn. Halfway through, Sherlock plucked half a dozen strands from his hand and directed them six degrees to the left. John raised an eyebrow and Sherlock pointed at the awkward slump of Mark’s body. Frowning, John took a step back studied the angle then nodded and started methodically moving the rest of the yarn accordingly. 

“It’s creepy when you guys do that,” Jennifer said when Sherlock had turned his attention to the chalkboard. 

“Do what?” John unravelled another long stream of yarn, reaching from the back of the female dummy’s head to the desk chair serving as the cabinets. 

“Never mind.” She rolled her eyes and cut a piece of tape for him. 

“Where are the papers from the table?” Sherlock turned on Alistair, who took a quick step backwards and almost toppled into the pile of boxes. “They were in the photographs! Do you see nothing?” 

“Right here,” Lestrade plucked a plastic bag with blood spattered paper from one of the supposedly emptied boxes, passing it to Sherlock. It was probably pure coincidence that he angled his body to keep Alistair firmly behind him. “Looks like some kind of equation.” 

Sherlock shook the papers into his latex gloved hands. He made a soft noise of surprise then started to flip through them rapidly. The team went quiet, watching him with nervous anticipation. 

“We need to find the boy.” Sherlock shook the papers at Lestrade. “That’s why they killed the parents!” 

“Seems like a backwards kind of kidnapping,” Jennifer pointed out. “The parents are the most likely to pay a ransom.” 

“They didn’t want money.” Sherlock sneered. “Nothing so pedestrian! They were after what was locked up in his head. He’s a prodigy. Possibly one of the most advanced in years. Look!” 

He thrust the stack at Jennifer, who caught them before they fluttered to the floor. In the shaky handwriting of a young child, intricate equations danced down lined pages. John looked over her shoulder, recognising bits and pieces from his last brush with mathematics. He tried to imagine a five year old writing out the careful numbers, a moment of brilliance interrupted by the murder of his parents. 

“We’ve got a photo of him,” Lestrade moved it to the center of the board. A boy with cherubic cheeks and wispy brown hair looked blankly to the left as if searching for something beyond the photographer. “For all the good it might do.” 

“Alistair,” Sherlock snapped, “trace all adoption records for the three months following the crime. Check parents’ professions, we’re looking for someone involved in maths or physics. They’ll have had a significant breakthrough not long after the adoption.”

Alistair disappeared into his field of machines, looking grateful to be gone. 

“There’s a gap in the blood splatter,” John observed, stepping back from their jury rigged version of the scene. 

“The boy was there, obviously,” Sherlock inserted himself neatly between the red yarn that leaped from the female dummy’s head, “writing at the table when the killer came in. The man was shot first, the boy gets up in a panic and the mother starts towards him to protect him. Second shot. He would have been splattered with blood. How do you get a hysterical child covered in blood out of an occupied building with no one noticing?” 

“What if he wasn’t hysterical?” Jennifer looked thoughtfully over the scene. “What if he went into shock? That seems just as likely. It would have made him docile. Then you could bundle him up and carry him out. Most people would think he was sleeping.” 

“Still doesn’t answer what any of them were doing here in the first place.” Lestrade adjusted a piece of tape. “They couldn’t know they were walking into danger or they wouldn’t have taken their son with them, but it was important enough that they couldn’t cancel or have one of them stay behind to look after him.” 

“Obvious,” Sherlock sniffed. “I’ll need to confirm, but it’s quite clear.” 

“What is?” John prompted. 

“The Westins were lured there with a lie. One quite close to the truth. That their genius child is special and eligible for some program or another.” Sherlock reached out to pluck at run a finger down one red strand. “The killer put the boy through his paces, ensuring the quality of the goods, then he took out the parents.” 

“Why leave the maths sheets behind?” Jennifer asked as she fit the sheets into plastic sheaths before clipping them to one of the boards. “Sloppy work there for someone with so much planning.” 

“Think!” commanded Sherlock, stalking back and forth in front of the boards. “I can’t do it for you all the time!” 

Silence prevailed for several heavy seconds, Sherlock looking more and more put out by their collective ignorance until John caught on. 

“The killer was counting on Donnell taking the evidence.” 

“Why?” Sherlock pressed, eyes bright and promising. 

“Because Donnell _was_ the killer. Something he did on the side. Freelance. That’s why the different gun and the different motive.” John felt a smile rising as he tried to ignore the heat in Sherlock’s gaze. These were the moments they lived for, the adrenaline rush of discovery. “He had to get the kid out first and quietly as possible. That was his first priority. He could get away with leaving things behind because he knew he could clean up the evidence later.” 

“If that’s true then we don’t have a case,” Lestrade pointed out. “There’s a task force going through Donnell’s crimes. We should just hand this one over.” 

“The murder case, perhaps, but not the kidnapping.” Sherlock grinned, feral and sharp. “That is undeniably a cold case. Donnell may have taken him, but he didn’t keep him. That’s where we come in.” 

“You’re splitting hairs,” Lestrade hid a smile in a thoughtful hand over the lower half of his face. “I think I can talk them into buying it though. They’re probably already overwhelmed. Donnell had his fingers in a lot of pies.”

“We’ll require Alistair’s list before we can proceed.” Sherlock tapped his finger irritably against the board. 

“Good, you can finish your report on the Brummer case then,” Lestrade clapped Sherlock on the shoulder. “Off you pop.” 

“I’ll take another look at the Mayfair bones.” John ducked away before Sherlock could coax him into filling out the reports for him again. 

When they’d initially assigned John an office, he’d been a little put out that he was sealed away from the rest of the team. In the two years since he’d become officially attached to the department, he’d grown to love the door that closed him away from the outside madness. It was usually his only break in the day from Sherlock, a little time to reassert his own identity and to get on the work that he had come to love almost despite himself . 

The Mayfair bones had been discovered a year ago under a construction site named by the location. The jumble of femurs, skulls and delicate finger bones added up to three incomplete skeletons. The two skulls showed signs of severe blunt force trauma, leading them to John’s desk in careful cotton wrapping. He poured over them when they first arrived, but there was no evidence left to work with. Still, he felt dedicated to the poor lost bones and took them out from time to time looking for any small sign he might have missed. 

“Let’s see now 5A,” he said gently as he drew out one long femur bone from its climate controlled shelf. “I’ve been doing some reading and I’ve got a new test for you.” 

He passed a few quiet hours trying to determine possible drug use. He was just considering making a lunch run when the door burst open in a flurry of papers and tousled dark curls. 

“We have a lead, John! Quickly!” 

“A lead to what?” He took his coat off the hook and followed him out into the offices. 

“The whereabouts of James Westin, what else?” Sherlock sighed in exasperation. “Alistair’s initial reports were all dead ends- I realised my premise was faulty. The kidnappers may not have been sophisticated enough to fake an adoption. They could have used the boy as a replacement for a biological child.” 

“Oh, god. Do you think they killed their own kid?” 

“Possibly, need more data.” Sherlock opened the hallway door. “Accompanied with a long distance move and new jobs, they might be able to accomplish it. Close family members would notice, so it’s doubtful that the couple has much in the way of relatives. Any ties they had formerly would be severed until the boy is old enough for any changes in appearance to be chalked up to age.” 

“Fuck.” John rubbed a hand over his face. “It never stops amazing me how bloody minded people can be.” 

“More desperate, I’d say.” Lestrade stepped out of his office shrugging into a jacket. “Where’s the lead then?” 

“We don’t need you,” Sherlock spat. 

“And yet, here I am. Amazing.” Lestrade grinned. “My department- I get to go where I want, Sergeant. Where are we off to, then?” 

“Imperial College.” 

“What... in London?” John snorted. “Why would they come back here? What about everything you just said about them avoiding recognition?” 

“Our favourite motive.” Sherlock strode down the hall, coat flaring dramatically behind him. “Ego!” 

“You have a favourite motive?” Lestrade asked, one side of his mouth quirking dangerously up. 

“Don’t start with me,” John grumbled shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “It’s a long story.” 

They piled into the car, Lestrade firmly behind the wheel and John relegated to the back. He hated the back- it's missing door handles, ugly memories and the lingering stench of drunks- but Sherlock’s longer legs won him the front every time. 

“Care to tell me who we’re going to be questioning?” Lestrade asked, pulling into traffic. 

“Professor Alexander Moriarty.” Sherlock rubbed his hands together. “Newly appointed to the mathematics department due in no small part to his remarkable proof of the Jacobian Conjecture. His career was previously based upon the work of an uninspired mind. He does however possess a nine year old son named James. Birth on record in Cardiff and entirely home educated by his mother. She’s a non-entity, barely exists herself outside of a few shop jobs before she got married.” 

John pulled against the seat belt until he could lean farther forward. “Why aren’t we going right to the house then?” 

“We’re doing this by the book, John,” Sherlock scolded, eyes wide with disbelief. “I can’t confront a doting mother and her poor child without due evidence.” 

“Make fun, but I keep you in cases, you mad bastard.” The car changed lanes suddenly, throwing Sherlock against the window. 

“Why are we doing it, really?” John asked. 

“Because I need him distracted while you go and talk to the mother. They’ve got a flat not far from the college.” 

“You do remember that John isn’t authorised to do investigative work?” 

“He’s more than capable,” Sherlock’s eyes flickered up to the rearview mirror. “If she contacts her husband before we get a chance to talk to him, we’ll lose vital evidence. They can corroborate.” 

“Fine,” Lestrade turned a sharp left. “I’ll drop the two of you off and you can talk to the mother together and I’ll go talk to our Professor.” 

“But-” 

“No protests.” Lestrade snapped, and in the mirror John watched a flicker of satisfaction cross Sherlock’s face. Of course. Manipulation. “I am still your senior officer, Sherlock.” 

“How could I forget when you remind me constantly?” Sherlock slumped listlessly against the door. 

“You asked for me.” 

John groaned quietly. This was Lestrade’s ace in the hole, the hard reminder that Sherlock had been forced to choose his minder. The Commissioner was hardly about to hand a newly formed department over to someone so young and with such well documented flaws, no matter how brilliant. 

“And each day I regret it,” Sherlock hissed. 

“No, you don’t,” Lestrade laughed. “Imagine what a real boss would be like. You would be pushing paper until the Apocalypse.” 

No one spoke again until Lestrade pulled over to let them out. Sherlock launched out of his seat in a flash, flinging open John’s door with a flourish. Happy to be free, John allowed himself to be dragged onto the pavement and away from Lestrade’s yelled warnings. 

“He would have let you interview the mother first, if you’d asked.” 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Sherlock grinned, charging up the steps to knock on the door. 

“Who is it?” A woman’s voice filtered through the wood. 

“Police.” Flipping open his warrant card, Sherlock held it in front of the peephole. 

“What do you want?” There was a nasal quality to her voice as if she had a bad cold. 

“We only need to ask you a few questions,” A fake smile lit up Sherlock’s face like Christmas. “Only be a minute.” 

“Could you come back tomorrow?” 

“I’m afraid not,” Sherlock let the smile dim a little. “It’s a matter of some importance.” 

“I couldn’t possibly,” she sniffled loudly. “Please, just come back tomorrow. I’ve got too much to do....” 

“Mrs. Moriarty,” Sherlock growled, dropping all pretence of friendliness, “I do not wish to make a scene at your front door, but I certainly will.” 

A lock turned with an ugly thud and the door pulled back. A thick purple bathrobe was pulled tightly around the painfully tiny woman, thick semi-circles the color of the robe weighed heavily under her eyes and lank hair falling over her face. The faint scent of chlorine wafted out of the dark hallway behind her. 

“I’m Doctor John Watson and this is Sergeant Sherlock Watson.” John offered his hand which she shook lightly. Her skin was cool and clammy. “We’re sorry to interrupt your day, but it really is important. Can we come in?” 

She turned and shuffled down the hall without a word. It was close enough to an invitation that John felt comfortable stepping inside, Sherlock at his back. The dark hallway spilled into a tiny, but very clean kitchen. Everything was tucked neatly into its place, the lingering smell of chlorine combating against bleach. 

“I don’t have any tea.” She sniffed again, pulling a tissue from the sleeve of her robe and blowing noisily. “I suppose I could put on some coffee.” 

“It’s fine, really.” There was a kitchen table with three gleaming wooden chairs. John sat at one and smiled when she took another. Sherlock stayed standing, quick eyes flying about the room. 

“What is it then?” She glanced warily at Sherlock. 

“How long have you lived here, Mrs. Moriarty?” John asked. 

“Six months, nearly seven.” Her fingers sank into the depths of her robe, retreating. “Alex was offered a position here and we both missed London.” 

“Alex is your husband?” 

“Yes.” She smiled, tense and fleeting. “We met in London.” 

“And what does he do for a living?” 

“He’s a professor. Is there a point to this?” 

“And what about your son?” 

“What about him?” Her eyes narrowed. “What did he do?” 

“Why would you say that?” Sherlock pounced, eyes bright. “Does he get in trouble often?” 

“Jamie is a good boy,” she blew her nose again, then balled the tissue in her hand. “but he can be very difficult. He doesn’t get along well with other children. I teach him at home as best I can.” 

“How is he meant to get on with other children if he’s never around them?” John prodded. 

“He’s on a local swim team with some other boys and there’s group music lessons. He plays the piano wonderfully.” A hint of a smile peeked at the corner of her lips. “It’s easier for him if there’s something to do. The other boys always want to talk. Jamie doesn’t.” 

“Is he violent?” Sherlock pressed and the smile disappeared from her face. 

“No.” She stared at the tissue in her hand as if it might offer answers. 

“It’s important that you not lie to us, Mrs. Moriarty,” Sherlock leaned forward, eyes bright with unspoken menace. She shrank against the wall. “This is important.” 

“I’m not lying,” she half-sobbed. John kicked Sherlock hard under the table. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone. It’s only... he has a way of looking at you.” 

“What way?” Sherlock glared at John, but eased back and softened his voice. 

“It doesn’t matter.” She wiped at her face with her sleeve. 

“Can we speak with him?” John asked. “Only for a minute and you would be there the whole time.” 

“I... you still haven’t explained what you want.” 

“Let us talk to Jamie, just for a minute. If he can answer a few questions for us, it’ll settle everything,” Sherlock glanced over at John then added a gentle, “Please.” 

“Only for a minute.” She rose from the table and shuffled up the stairs.

“What do you think?” John whispered. 

“Domestic abuse,” Sherlock replied flatly. “Mostly verbal, a few slaps and the like when words stop working. She’s depressed, potentially suicidal. Not nearly as paranoid as she should be considering the enormity of the secret she’s keeping.” 

“She seems tired. Maybe she wants to be found out. Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

Soft footsteps echoed back down the stairs. Mrs. Moriarty sighed softly and gestured up the stairs. 

“Come along, Jamie.” She smiled with false, brittle brightness. 

The boy who came down the stairs looked, if anything, more fragile than his mother. He was all delicate bones and pale skin. Thick brown hair fell messily to the top of his ears, accentuating a wide forehead and a sharply pointed nose. His eyes were a fathomless dark brown, restless as they darted over John and Sherlock, taking them in. The yellowing remains of a bruise encircled his left wrist. Without conscious thought, John was on his knees, looking it over. 

“Sorry, may I?” He asked, holding out his hand towards the boy’s hand. 

“It’s nothing,” Mrs. Moriarty protested, but it was weak and fading. She offered no excuse, no story. 

“I’m only going to have a look,” he said in his best doctor’s voice, catching the boy’s roving gaze. After a tense second, there was a slight nod. “Thank you.” 

He picked up the delicate wrist, making out the clear lines of where fingers had dug in too hard. 

“Is this the only one?” John asked softly. 

“Of course it’s not,” Sherlock snorted. “Don’t ask stupid questions, John.” 

The little boy’s face cracked open into a wide jagged smile, the faintest hint of a choked giggle rising up in the small throat. Cocking his head to one side, Sherlock crouched down to search Jamie’s eyes. They stared at one another, the man and the child, for a long moment. Slowly, Sherlock reached for the cuff of Jamie’s jumper and pushed up the sleeve without ever taking his eyes away from his steady piercing gaze. 

The soft porcelain skin of Jamie’s arm was mottled with cigarette burns, unmistakable in their shape. Bruises flushed black, blue, green and yellow in between. Someone held him roughly, held him down and burned him. One of the burns looked like it might be infected. John stood slowly, turning on the now shaking Mrs. Moriarty. 

“How long has this been going on?” he demanded. 

“Years.” Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, but she made no effort to wipe them away. “He’s such a difficult child, you can’t imagine. How dark... how awful he can be. He knew things about people, terrible secret private things... He talked all the time, tore away at us... I had to make him stop. Stop talking. Stop seeing.” 

“You did this?” John stared at her, this tiny frail, shaking woman and her murderous fear. 

“I’ll take care of Mrs. Moriarty.” Sherlock stood, a shield between John’s wrath and the crying woman. “Get the boy upstairs. Pack him a bag. He won’t be staying here tonight.” 

“I’ll call NSPCC.” 

“I’ll take care of it. Get him upstairs,” Sherlock repeated, calm and solid. “Now, John.” 

“Right.” He looked back at Jamie. “Can you show me your room?” 

Jamie dashed back up the stairs and John followed into a small, strange bedroom. The walls caught John’s eyes first. Spidery script crept along white paint everywhere a child could reach. Equations upon equations, tight packed numbers written in black, blue and red ink. It made a demented sort of decoration, a counterpoint to the otherwise sanitized room with its white sheets and utilitarian furniture. There was no trace of the boy that lived there, except for the equations. Someone had tried to scour him away. 

Jamie pulled a bag out from under his bed. It reeked of chlorine and a little bit like mould. There were clothes neatly folded inside, socks, underwear, t-shirts and pants. Quickly, Jamie added a stack of papers boasting further equations and pack of pens. 

“How long have you been ready to leave?” John asked as Jamie zipped the bag up again. The boy gave him another quick, manic smile as he pulled the bag’s strap up and over his thin chest. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to bring?” 

Jamie hesitated, watching John carefully. He seemed to be weighing something. Finally, he reached under the stark white covers and drew out a much battered stuffed animal. It was missing a sharp pointed ear and its glass eyes were many times scratched, but it was still recognizably a wolf. 

“He can definitely come,” John swallowed against the harsh burn in his throat. “Does he have a name?” 

Jamie nodded, but said nothing. He tucked the wolf into the bag. Outside, blue and red lights began to flash, throwing coloured shadows over the writing on the walls. They walked together down the stairs into the empty hallway. John opened the hall closet and found a child size jacket. He handed it to Jamie, who looked at with repugnance before shrugging into it. The sleeves were too short, catching a few inches above the wrist. 

“That won’t do.” John shrugged out of his own jacket. “Here, let’s trade.” 

Jamie lifted an eyebrow, conveying exactly what he thought of that statement. 

“I promise I won’t try and put yours on. I can tell your sense of humour is far more sophisticated.” He grinned. “Come on then.”

Jamie shed the jacket and accepted the steel grey peacoat that Sherlock had bought John on a whim years ago. It enveloped the boy and John had to kneel down to roll up the sleeves to free Jamie’s hands. Together they walked out into the chaos of the street. Mrs. Moriarty was tucked away in the back of a car, head bowed and shoulders shaking. Sherlock was talking animatedly with several uniformed officers, stopping mid-gesticulation when he spotted John. 

“Lestrade is on his way. The professor is claiming innocence both in the abuse and in the abduction.” Sherlock grimaced. “She’s not talking now. I’ll be staying on scene to check the house. I’m sure we can find enough evidence for all of it. I need you to take care of the boy.” 

“Right, who’s here to take him then?” He didn’t especially want to hand the poor kid off to someone else, but that was the job. They were lucky, in a way, that they usually worked with the long dead. It kept them isolated from the painful day to day reality of the crimes they solved. 

“You’re taking him back to ours.” Sherlock crouched down again, searching the child’s eyes. “No one else can handle him.” 

“That’s not our call to make!” John snapped. “We can’t just take him home.” 

“We must.” A strange, ethereal smile graced Sherlock’s face, half-knowing and half-sad. It was a new expression and it shook John a little. “James is extraordinary. He will require extraordinary parents.” 

“Parents?” John felt faint. “Sherlock, you can’t just-” 

“Sergeant!” Lestrade climbed out of his car, face flushed. “What happened to a quiet talk?” 

“This boy has marks consistent with long term physical abuse.” Sherlock didn’t get up, didn’t look away from Jamie’s face. “His mother admitted to incurring burns and bruising. Would you have preferred I left him there?” 

“No... no, of course not,” Lestrade sighed heavily. “You could’ve said when you rang. We’ll have the professor round for questioning then. The boy’ll have to go into care for a few days.” 

“He’s coming home with us.” Sherlock stood in blur, the dramatic line of his coat shielding Jamie from sight. 

“You can’t take him just like that,” Lestrade looked to John, who could only shrug in mutual confusion. “Why would you want to?” 

“Does it matter? We’re both capable adults. We can look after him as well as anyone else.” 

There was a long pause as Lestrade, John and perhaps even Sherlock himself absorbed the sheer outrageousness of that statement. Something tugged at the edge of John’s jumper. He looked down to find Jamie staring up at him, expressionless. 

“What is it?” he asked softly. 

Jamie slipped his right hand into John’s left and squeezed slightly. 

“No.” Lestrade said firmly when John looked back up at him, “this isn’t a dog following you home. You can’t scoop him off the streets. There are laws about this. Regulations.” 

“Call Mycroft,” Sherlock said, measured and careful. 

“You call him,” sniffed Lestrade. “If this matters so much to you, then get over whatever petty nonsense you’re feuding over this time.” 

“Fine.” Sherlock pulled his mobile from his pocket. “I hope I’m interrupting something of national importance.” 

“Am I seeing this?” Lestrade pseudo-whispered as Sherlock dialed the numbers. 

“It’s been a very odd day.” John closed his eyes briefly. “Even by our standards.” 

Stalking away, Sherlock’s conversation could only be read in the furious movements of his free hand. Brokering peace had never been Sherlock’s strong point, but apparently he’d found something more important than his own ego. Curious, John looked over Jamie again. Why this child? Why now? 

“You don’t know how very extraordinary you are,” John said quietly. Jamie didn’t look up, didn’t pay John any mind. All his attention was on Sherlock as if he were the patient worshipper of some new god. John let out a sigh. “Yeah. I know that feeling.” 

Whatever deal Sherlock had made with Mycroft left him sour and snappish. He herded John and Jamie into a cab without room for questions or theories. In the background, Lestrade was barking orders. Jennifer emerged from another car, already taking quick notes in her tiny notebook. She waved at John as the cab pulled away. 

“I’m not sure how this is going to work out,” John said more to himself than the boy. “But I’ll try my best, alright?” 

Jamie nodded, then turned to look out the window, his bag clenched tight in his hands. He took in the scenery through the window, staying eerily silent. For his part, John spent the ride fretting over the state of the flat. It was no place for a child. They didn’t even have a second bedroom, only the pull out sofa-bed that served as Harry’s part-time bedroom. He should have called her. 

He managed some good cheer when they arrived, paying the cab driver from the cash that occasionally appeared in his pockets. With the casualness of those used to plenty, Sherlock was forever tucking stray pounds in odd places. “Let’s get you settled in and then maybe some lunch.” 

To John’s relief, Harry had cleared off the sofa and out of the flat entirely, probably preparing for breaking the news to Mum tonight. She’d left the sofa bed out, but neatly made. 

“That’ll be yours for now.” He gestured at the unfolded bed. “Sorry we don’t have a proper bed.” 

For the first time since they left the house, Jamie slipped away from his side to inspect the couch. He walked around it, studying it from every angle. Then he set his bag at the foot, kicked off his shoes and climbed up onto it. After a few fussy manoeuvres, he pulled back the covers and settled under them. 

“You don’t have to sleep now.” John smoothed a nervous hand over the sheets. “Unless you fancy a nap?” 

Jamie pulled a pillow under his head and the covers over it, so only a tuft of dark hair stuck out from the top. His eyes slid lazily closed. Even from under the blankets, John could see the tight curl of his body go slack and peaceful. Trauma affected everyone differently, John supposed as he retreated quietly to the kitchen. Maybe sensing that he had arrived at a peaceful breathing space in the chaotic pain of his life, Jamie had sensibly decided to take advantage. Sherlock had said he was bright. 

Luckily John had experience making meals in near silence. He’d gotten into the habit of treating Sherlock’s sleep as sacred, especially after long bouts without. Surveying their pathetic bachelor's assortment of ready food, John decided on fried bread. Breakfast food was still his specialty after all. On whim, he cut the bread into xs and ys. 

The soft touch of a hand on his waist took him off guard and he nearly knocked over the frying pan. Jamie blinked up at him. Sleep had mashed his hair into crazy spikes on the left side. 

“Sorry, sorry!” John laughed, a little breathlessly. “I was concentrating too hard, you surprised me. I hope you like fried bread.” 

Jamie eyed the stack thoughtfully then shrugged. 

“Right, well have a seat then. I’ll make you a plate.” 

Soon they were settled around the kitchen table, ample helpings settled before them. John poured syrup liberally on his own portions, handing it over to Jamie to do as he pleased. With surgical precision, Jamie cut a hole through the bread and poured the syrup into the middle. Then he took tiny bites around the edges, dipping each piece into the centre. 

“You can talk if you like.” John bit into a sausage, trying to recall what he’d learned on psychological trauma over the years. “No one is going to hurt you here. You won’t be in trouble for talking.” 

Jamie regarded him warily over his plate. 

“I mean it. You should hear some of the things Sherlock has said to me over the years. Horrible, horrid things. And I’ve said a few back.” He took a sip of his tea. “We’ve never laid a hand on each other in anger. I promise that you’re safe here. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want too, but you can. Anytime you want.” 

With the sharp tines of his fork, Jamie speared a piece of bread and stared at it for a long moment. He shrugged and then nodded as if he was doing John a favour by thinking it over. 

“I’ve got to admit that I’ve no idea what to do with you after this. There’s not much here for a kid to have fun with.” The few videos they owned were too mature, the stuffed bookcases geared for an omnivorous adult genius and nearly anything resembling a toy was most likely a dangerous experiment component. Though there had been a rather odd case a few months ago that had landed them with an assortment of art supplies. “Do you like modelling clay?” 

Licking a strip of syrup from his hand with the tip of his tongue, Jamie regarded him blankly. 

“Well, we can start with that and see how we go.”

When John got up to collect the plates, Jamie matched him, handing him the plates from the table. He plucked a dishtowel where it hung limp and stained on the handle of the oven door. John grinned and started washing the plates, handing them to Jamie to dry. When they’d finished, John disembowelled the Sunday newspaper to spread over the table. The art supply box had already collected a fine sheen of dust in the corner, but the clay had been tightly wrapped in plastic and only a few bits had gone hard. 

“What should we make?” 

Jamie picked up the thick cut of red clay and squeezed it hard in his hand until it oozed out between his fingers. Then he carefully reformed it into the same stiff rectangle. He repeated the cycle of creation and destruction for a few minutes, before finally pausing to investigate John’s own sculpted doodles. He’d rolled out thin worms of clay into squiggles, then bent them into familiar molecular structures: iron, oxygen and caffeine. 

“I’m not much an artist,” he admitted, “but I like the look of them and they’re easy to make.” 

Jamie reached for the clay again, working faster this time, clearly to a purpose. He mimicked John’s long worms, building a ladder. When he was finished, he peeled it from the table and slowly rotated it. 

“That’s brilliant!” John smiled in amazement. “DNA. You’ve even got the right number of base pairs.” 

Jamie frowned, looked at his creation then up at John. That was an expression that John hadn’t seen in many years, but it stayed painfully familiar. Jamie didn’t know how to handle the praise. 

“Sherlock’s got some massive books on DNA. Want to take a look?” 

Jamie nodded slowly, letting the model collapse back onto the table. He held up his hands, speckled with clay. 

“Guess we should wash up first. C’mon then.” 

It took some doing to get the last of the clay out from under their fingernails, but Jamie refused to budge from the sink until John had managed to scrub out the last stubborn bit. John made a note to either invest in some crayons which would leave less of a lasting mark or start stockpiling soap. He tried to shake the thought away, but it rooted and bloomed. Making long term plans was a poor idea, he reminded himself, as he located one of the more colourful of Sherlock’s chemistry books. 

They wound up the floor, leaning up against the sofa. Bright illustrations held Jamie’s attention as John tried to render the text understandable for him. It was hard to judge how much Jamie understood, but John tried not to simplify too much. He remembered how much he hated being talked down to as child. 

“-and that’s what’s in the air we breath,” he was concluding when the unmistakable rattle of keys signalled Sherlock’s return. Jamie tensed. 

The door swung open and Sherlock entered in his usual flurry, stuffing keys and gloves into his coat and then flinging it on to its hook. He turned neatly, surveying the scene in mild surprise. Affection warred with rage in John’s chest, but he only smiled and pushed the book so it was fully in Jamie’s lap. 

“Hello, disaster.” He got to his feet. “Did you get everything settled?” 

“Hardly,” Sherlock’s lips tightened. He always could sense John’s anger and irritation. Even now that great mind was churning through the day’s interactions, searching for the wrong turn. “The case has only grown more complicated.” 

“Details later, yeah?” John cut a glance over to Jamie, who was once more watching Sherlock intently. “What do you want for dinner?” 

“Not hungry.” 

“I’ll just do something for myself and Jamie then.” 

“Don’t call him that.” Sherlock crouched down at Jamie’s side. A hint of a smile tugged at the boy’s lips, the first John had seen all afternoon. “It’s what his mother called him.” 

“Sorry? What should I call him then? James?” The name felt leaden and thick on John’s tongue. James Watson had been dead for twelve years, but the contaminated mess of memory remained. 

“Why don’t you ask him?” 

“He doesn’t talk. I told him that he could.” 

A complicated expression flashed briefly over Sherlock’s face, raw, unguarded and untranslatable. 

“Still. Jamie. It doesn’t fit.” Sherlock tilted his head back to contemplate the ceiling, oblivious to the boy watching him with fierce intensity. “Something else.” 

“We can’t just rename him.” 

“There are such a thing as nicknames, Johnny.” Drawled Sherlock, in the tone he reserved particularly for picking fights. 

“Don’t do that,” John said, tightly. 

John turned his back, retreating to the kitchen to lick his wounds. Johnny was for his mother, for Harry. For the kind of family that peeled at your skin and dug in their nails. He was always John to Sherlock, rolled seductively, stretched in contemplation and turned to the plaintive _Jawn_ on bad days. As he shuffled through the cabinets for a jar of tomato sauce, John grit his teeth and reminded himself that he’d chosen all this. Carefully, he got out a pot and filled it with water. By Sherlock’s rules, he had played fair. He didn’t know why John was angry therefore he would find a reason to make John more irritable. If he could provoke John into shouting then Sherlock was no longer wrong. Barely resisting the urge to slam the pot down, John settled for biting down hard on one finger, ripping at a loose cuticle.

“You shouldn’t do that, ” a long arm snaked around his waist, pulled him tight against a long warm body. 

“You are such an unmitigated arse.” But John’s body was treacherous, relaxing against familiar warmth. “Where’s Jamie?” 

“Occupied.” Cool lips pressed against the nape of John’s neck. 

“You can’t just make these decisions for us. This is a huge thing, Sherlock. We can’t take in a child at your say-so with no discussion. You never even said you wanted kids.” He tilted his head up, catching Sherlock’s confused stare. “I wrote that part of my life off years ago.” 

“I don’t want children, John.” The name was an apology, a caress. “I never have. But this child requires us.” 

“You said that before. Why?” 

“If he gets put into the system, it will ruin him. He’s brilliant. How can you hand that over to dullards and watch him become duller for it?” Sherlock made a soft frustrated noise. “Or worse. He could be.... he could be so many things.” 

“We’re no kind of fathers.” 

“Then we’ll be a new kind.” Sherlock dropped his face into John’s hair, hiding his expression. Misdirecting. “He’s not ordinary, neither are we.” 

“I’ve no idea why this is so important to you.” John reached up to put a hand on Sherlock’s jaw. “You have to think this through. If this happens, it will change everything. No more running off or risking our lives. Someone will have to be home with him until we can get him into a school. If we can even get him into school. It will all be different.” 

“He’s ours, John. I wish you could... it’s as clear to me as any solution to a case. Clearer.” Sherlock made an annoyed noise. “Obvious.” 

“I’m not upheaving our whole life together for something you can’t explain,” John stroked his thumb over the high ridge of Sherlock’s left cheekbone, “but he can stay for now, alright? Until we get this cleared up.” 

“Fine,” Sherlock pulled away in stages, “You’ll end up agreeing.” 

“Allow me the illusion of freedom of choice.” 

“You choose me. All the time,” Sherlock leaned forward to brush a kiss over John’s forehead. “Not an illusion.” 

“You should eat something.” 

“Not going to happen.” They grinned wildly at each other, before Sherlock swept out. 

John watched surreptitiously as Sherlock slid elegantly to the floor next to the boy. Jamie looked nothing like Sherlock, not really, but somehow they seemed a pair. Maybe it was the frenetic eyes or the odd head tilt as if listening to noises no one else could hear. The water boiled and John slid long brittle strands of pasta into it. They softened slowly, going loose and wavy. 

The phone rang, ending his meditation on the possible metaphors of pasta. He picked it up absently. 

“Hello?” 

“Is this Dr. Watson?” A crisp official voice asked. 

“Yes, that’s me. And this is?” 

“Detective Inspector Dimmock. I’m calling regarding a case.” 

It had to be about Moran. John squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing deeply. 

“Which case?” 

“The Mayfair Bones. I’ve been advised that you know the most about them.” 

“Oh, what can be known from so little evidence,” he practically laughed, giddy with relief. “Has something else been found?” 

“You have no idea.” Dimmock swallowed hard. “We found his primary dumping site. Same cause of death with a blow to the head. Only some these aren’t fully decomposed.” 

“It can’t be the same killer.” John frowned, glancing into the living room. Sherlock and James were still engrossed in the book, but he lowered his voice nonetheless. “The Mayfair Bones are over thirty years old.” 

“And so is the dump site. We’ve got every stage going on here. Skeletons to corpses. Medic puts the freshest one at two months old.” 

“How many?” The dread returned with a new angle. How many people had died while he poked at dried bones without hope? 

“Two dozen. Maybe more. Hard to tell with the older bodies. It’s not a cold case anymore, Doctor, but we’d be gratified if you’d liaise with us. We’ll spend tonight documenting, then tomorrow... well. Morgue will be full up.” 

“Yes, of course. Have you spoken with D.I. Lestrade?” 

“He’s agreed to the lend. Report to autopsy first thing tomorrow. Dr. Hooper will be happy to assist you.” 

“Hooper? What happened to Clemens?” 

“He’s keeping up with all the other cases. Hooper is his new second in command.” Someone in the background shouted something foul. “Tomorrow, Dr. Watson?” 

“I’ll be there.” 

He hung up and turned back to the pasta. It had glued itself into thick chunks that broke up only reluctantly under his wooden spoon assault. Only when dinner was ready did it occur to him that they had no child care set up for the next day. Sherlock would be dashing about working Jamie’s case and John had committed himself to morgue duty. 

“You can take him with you,” Sherlock addressed his frown with his usual near clairvoyance. 

“I am not taking a child to a morgue, you complete and utter nutter,” John poured thick red sauce over the pasta. “He’s messed up enough.” 

“I wasn’t suggesting you let him watch an autopsy. If you bring him some entertainment, maybe some schoolwork, he’ll be just fine in Clemens office.” 

“It’s not right for a child to be around so much death.” The bowls hit the table with a faint clink. 

“Maybe,” Sherlock shrugged, one elegant rolling gesture, “but we survived it. And it’s better than leaving him with a stranger.” 

“Sherlock, to him, I am a stranger.” 

Jamie looked up at that and shook his head once, firmly. 

“You only met me this morning,” John pointed out, handing the boy a fork. 

“It was a busy day,” Sherlock grinned, none of it reaching his eyes. “And he’s a very good judge of character. Aren’t you, Jim?” 

The boy smiled back, spearing his fork into the bowl, slowly twirling a single strand of pasta around the tines. 

“Jim?” John raised an eyebrow. 

“We agreed on it,” Sherlock raised one right back, before stealing John’s fork and a bit of his pasta. “Jim is an accepted diminutive for James.” 

“And you like it?” John turned to the boy, who nodded before spearing another single strand of pasta. Good enough. John reached out and snatched back his fork. “There’s enough made for you to have your own bowl, you know.” 

“I don’t want my own,” Sherlock’s leg slid under the table, hooking around John’s ankle to pull him fractionally closer. “I want yours.” 

The phone rang. John looked expectantly at Sherlock, who looked blankly back. With a sigh, John got up and picked up the phone. 

“Hello?” 

“Johnny!” Harry shouted over the receiver. “Mum wants you to come over for dinner tomorrow night. We’re going to play happy family while she tries to dissuade me from joining up. Doesn’t that sound like fun?” 

“I can’t do tomorrow.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Everything’s gone crazy over here since this morning.” 

“Well, you better find a way to clear your schedule. She wants you there, Johnny. That’s...” 

“Big. Yes.” He laughed rustily. “Maybe it’s too late for her to come to that conclusion. Tell her Friday is the earliest I can do and I still might have to cancel.”

“If you’re sure-” 

“I’m sure.” 

“See you on Friday then. I’ll be at uni.” 

“For the best. Good night, Harry.” 

He turned back to the table. Jim and Sherlock were watching him with the same careful, curious expression. 

“That,” he said quietly, “is frightening.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This section is unbeta'd and un-britpicked while my beta deals with RL.

“Welcome to Scotland Yard, Jim.” 

Out of habit, John had gone around the back to the propped door. Jim looked around the dirty hallway, clearly unimpressed. Sherlock had left at the crack of dawn. Walking to work without him left John off kilter. Instead he had Jim, a silent, but vibrant presence at his side.

“Let’s get you settled first.” John said, more to himself than anything.

They headed down into the bowels of the building. As they neared the morgue, activity picked up with a flood of uniformed officers running to and from the propped open door with files and bags of evidence in hand. When they reached the entrance to the morgue, a harried young woman greeted them, her hair in disarray as she argued with one of the CSIs.

“You can’t take that yet, it hasn’t been cataloged.” She pleaded.

“Look, we need to take it to the forensics lab.” The tech crossed his arms over his chest. “Where’s Clemens? He’d give it to me.”

“Or he’d tell you off for disturbing the chain of custody.” John cut in, all false smiles. “Dr. Watson reporting in.”

“Oh hello!” The young woman turned, a timid smile starting on her face then fading instantly in recognition. “It’s you!”

“I’m sorry?” John searched his memory trying to recall her face.

“It’s Molly. Molly Hooper?” She prompted. “You interrogated me in a cafe a long time ago.”

“Oh...oh!” John swallowed hard. “Of course. I’m so sorry about all that. Sherlock and I didn’t know what we were about really.”

“It seemed like you knew exactly what you were about.” She corrected, then flushed. “It’s...good to see you again.”

“I hate to interrupt this magical reunion, but can we get to me getting my evidence?” The tech snapped.

“You’ll get it when we’re ready to release it, mate.” John glanced at the tech’s security badge. “Look, Anderson, is it? You know better than to come swanning in here demanding things. Could endanger the whole case if we gave it to you without proper paperwork.”

“And you’re John Watson, the freak’s pet doctor,” the tech smiled nastily.

“I truly hope you are not talking about my partner,” John took a deep measure breath, “because if you are, I would have to do something that would get us both suspended for the foreseeable future.”

“Threatening violence against a co-worker?” Anderson shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, doctor.”

“You smell of two women’s perfumes,” a small, reedy voice said. Frowning John glanced down at Jim, who was looking serenely at Anderson.

“Is that a kid?” Anderson stared at Jim, “Why the hell would you bring a kid in here?”

“My question exactly,” the rotund figure of Dr. Clemens finally emerged from his office.

“I was about to knock on your door,” John put a hand on Jim’s shoulder, “Sherlock and I are looking after this one for a few days. Would you mind if he hunkered down in your office?”

“He can take mine!” Molly cut in, drawing four sets of eyes. She flushed, “I mean, I don’t have much moved in yet. He can spread out at my desk. It’s closer to the morgue if he needs you.”

“That’s kind of you Dr. Hooper,” Clemens shook his head, “Do try and remember this isn’t a nursery, Dr. Watson. Anderson, get out of here. I told you that I’ll send over what we have when I’m damn ready. Don’t think your boss would be happy to know you’re harassing my department again.”

“Yes, sir.” Anderson skulked out.

“This way!” Molly chimed and headed further into the morgue to her office. 

“Nicely done,” John whispered to Jim, tousling the boy’s fine hair, “could be subtler though.”

Jim eyed him warily, but didn’t move away from the touch. Molly’s office was as bare as she had suggested, only a single unpacked box lingering in the corner. John set out a few books he’d picked off of Sherlock’s shelves, a blank drawing pad and a set of colored pencils. He showed Jim how the phone worked and promised to check in as often as possible. As soon as he stepped away, Jim cracked open the thickest of the books and seemed to forget John was there entirely.

“Smart kid,” Molly observed as they headed into the autopsy room, “a nephew?”

“Not really,” John pulled latex gloves, “listen, I’m so sorry about all of that. It must have been a rough afternoon.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she snapped on her own gloves, ducking her head, “I always wondered, you know. If you found your man in the end.”

“Nah,” John could still picture every detail of Moran’s face, “we were just kids playing at detective. It helped put a few things to rest though. So thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome. Want to start with the freshest and work our way backwards or the other way round?”

“We should start with the originals, I think. I can tell you what I know. I’m still not convinced they’re all related.”

By the time they broke for lunch, John was convinced. He and Molly worked well together, methodically sorting through the overwhelming amount of bodies and information. They’d discovered a distinctive pattern to the head wounds that were clearly caused by the same blunt, irregularly shaped object. The Mayfair bones were certainly left by the same killer or at least someone with the same exact method. Which meant they were dealing with a body trail that spanned decades.

“This count could beat out the Holmes record,” Molly had said, nearly gleeful as she pulled off her gloves. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Yeah, neither did I,” John swallowed thickly. Far from the first time, he was glad of Sherlock’s impulsive surname change. The last thing he needed was further tarring from that brush. “Though he operated for the same amount of time.”

“You don’t think this could be him too, do you? Maybe a further dumping site?”

“M.O. is totally different,” John said with no little relief, “he was all about doing it for show. This guy is hiding everything. Burying the evidence.”

“Hmm. Guess so. Did you bring something for lunch?”

“No, figured I’d take the poor kid out for a bite. Can’t be fun being trapped in here all day,” he paused then shrugged, in for a penny, in for a pound, “Want to come along?”

Which was how John wound up with Molly Hooper in a cafe for the second time. They were both in better spirits for this go around and the conversation, in deference to Jim, stayed light. 

“How did you get into pathology, anyway?” John asked when they’d exhausted their supply of small talk. 

“Oh, I’ve always preferred the dead to the living,” she laughed self-deprecatingly, “they complain a lot less. What about you?”

“I sort of fell into it,” he shrugged, breaking apart the last bit of his sandwich into chunks. Jim was watching them both with a quiet intensity that would have been unnerving if it wasn’t so familiar. “I liked having living patients, but they don’t have the same sense of mystery, do they?”

“Depends, I suppose,” Molly sipped her tea, eyebrows drawn together, “but I wouldn’t switch for anything. Dr. Clemens is going to retire soon. They brought me in more as an eventual replacement.”

“Congratulations then,” he raised his cup to her, “that’s a big achievement.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She smiled, “Well. Maybe you can come and work for me.”

The idea sunk into unexpectedly fertile soil after the last twenty-four hours. John shifted uncomfortably.

“That’d be something all right.” 

The thought stayed with John all afternoon as they started on the autopsies. Every so often he’d leave behind the smell of antiseptic and death to check on Jim. The boy seemed well entertained, making crude sketches of chemical compounds copied from Sherlock’s books. He’d look up when John came to the door and tension would ease away from his face. Then he’d go back to his sketch as casually as if John had never interrupted him. 

“Last one for the day,” Molly declared at six, “same time tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll be here,” John agreed and gathered up Jim to head home. On a whim, he called Sherlock’s office line from Molly’s office. It went into voicemail. Figured.

The walk home took them past John’s favorite Indian takeaway. He picked up a korma for himself, a curry for Sherlock if he ever came home and a few options for Jim, who looked at the menu with blank disinterest. The flat was quiet when they got home. John doled out food that Jim ate with increasing passion. He wound up devouring Sherlock’s curry, much to John’s surprise.

“Spicy food is a yes then?” He asked as he watched the boy’s forehead break out sweat. Jim nodded fervently. “Huh. Couldn’t have got me to touch the stuff when I was your age. Harry either.”

They watched television together after washing the dishes, Jim slowly leaning against John as the night when on until he fell asleep. John watched him for a long time, ignoring the muted babble of the news. He tried to see what Sherlock had spotted, what arcane symbol marked this boy as theirs. There was nothing. Only the dusky soot of long eyelashes against fair skin and the absolute trust of a child, who had every reason to never trust again.

A quiet knock startled John out of his reverie. He gently eased Jim off of him and covered him with a blanket before pacing soundlessly to the door. The knock came again, unmistakably the sound of plastic against wood. Specifically an umbrella handle tapping at the door.

“It’s late, Mycroft,” John complained as he opened the door, “and Sherlock’s not in.”

“Fortunately, you’re the one I wish to speak too. I trust the child is asleep.”

“Yeah, come on in. Just be quiet about it.”

“Of course,” Mycroft drifted into the flat, gravitating towards the kitchen.

“What can I do for you?” John asked as soon as Mycroft settled in a chair, “Whatever Sherlock promised you in exchange for Jim, I want no part of it.”

“He didn’t promise me anything,” Mycroft rubbed a hand over his face, “He made a few compelling points. Including one that I don’t think he could articulate to you, but you should know nonetheless.”

“Oh, god. We’re going to talk about your childhoods, aren’t we?” John groaned. “Let me at least let me get a drink first. You want one?”

Mycroft hesitated then gave a small nod. John poured them both a generous glass of whiskey. The thing that really killed John about these brief glimpses into Sherlock’s early years was how, no matter what anyone said to the contrary, Sherlock had turned out so well. Any one else would have long ago turned to drugs or murder or both.

“There could be an argument made firmly on the side of nature as opposed to nurture if you consider how Sherlock and I,” Mycroft took a small sip from the glass as if he hadn’t just demonstrated his disquieting near telepathic abilities, “but it has its limits. We are still a product of our parents as much as anyone else. I deal with it through control though I’m sure Sherlock would put it differently. He came up with a unique solution.”

“Oh?” John asked, only because he knew Mycroft liked a little conversational encouragement.

“When Mother grew too sick and I left, he found someone else to serve as nurturer,” Mycroft stared into his glass. “I don’t know if he did it consciously or not, but he picked you.”

“I’m really don’t like what that implies.”

“Don’t be dense,” Mycroft scolded, “I mean that he found someone who could model correct behavior and care for his needs. I’m sure he doesn’t see you as any kind of replacement for a father figure. Only that you filled certain aspects of the role which our own father...well failure is such a light word.”

“Clusterfuck.” John suggested.

“Indeed,” Mycroft’s lips twitched in the threat of a smile, “one could argue that Sherlock made the correct choice. With you, he’s able to leave behind some of the more distasteful elements of our shared traits. He can accept affection, even return it to some extent. Which is more than I can say for myself.”

“That’s not-”

“Please, I did not come to indulge in pity,” Mycroft swirled the ice in the glass slowly, “I’m aware of my shortcomings.”

“I think Greg would disagree.”

“You may think what you like. It’s hardly the point.”

“What is the point then?”

“The point is that Sherlock having found another mind as equally damaged as his own may have finally become advanced enough to express empathy,” Mycroft frowned as though the very thought if offended him, “and in feeling the pain of another much like himself would wish to apply the same remedy that worked the first time.”

John stared down in the glass liquor and wished it was something much much stronger so that he have an excuse not to understand what Mycroft was trying to tell him.

“Jim isn’t ours then,” he swallowed hard, “Sherlock meant him to be mine. So I could...what? Make sure he didn’t grow up to be a psychotic killer?”

“Simplistic, but yes, essentially.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist. Hell, I’m not even all that stable myself. I needed Sherlock just as badly as he needed me. More, probably. Before I met him, I was drowning.”

“Well we’re both aware of that, but Sherlock is not. I think between the two of you...well. There are worse parents,” now Mycroft smiled, horribly sardonic, “and I can lend my particular brand of help when required. I believe it would benefit everyone involved if you agreed to it.”

“I’m not ready to be a father,” he gulped down the last of the whiskey, “I gave up my childhood to raise Harry.”

“And your adolescence to tend to Sherlock.”

“We took care of each other. It was different,” John snapped.

“Was it?” 

“Yes,” and if he’s surprised by the firmness of his answer, John hoped it didn’t show in his face, “lovers aren’t parents.”

“I’m not sure the lines are nearly as clear as you like to have them.”

“I can’t live in shades of grey all the time. That’s what I have Sherlock for.”

“That’s hardly fair, John.” Sherlock drawled from the doorway, “I’ve been known to have my strict lines here and there. Yes, you didn’t hear me come in, no I wasn’t using the roof access again. You’ve just had too much to drink too quickly.”

“Jim ate your curry,” John got up to rifle through the cabinets, “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“I ate.”

“Liar,” John tsked as he pulled out a loaf of bread.

“Why are you here, Mycroft?” Sherlock regarded his brother through narrowed eyes.

“I came to talk to my brother-in-law. He was under the wrong impression about a few things.”

“And you set him straight did you?”

“I gave him information and my opinion. What he chooses to do with it, is up to him.”

“Why must you always interfere?” Sherlock sounded off, his voice soft around the edges.

“Because I’ll never be through being your older brother,” Mycroft rose, leaving his mostly untouched glass of whiskey behind, “And for all your insufferable ego you never give yourself the right kind of credit when it matters.”

“Get out.” Sherlock said with no vehemence.

“As you wish. Good night, John.”

“Good night, Mycroft.” 

John waited until he heard the soft click of the front door closing, before reached out to Sherlock. He was taken aback when his lover all but collapsed against him, burying his face in John’s neck. At a loss, John rubbed at his back.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock choked, “only the foolish words of a pathetic old man.”

“Christ, Sherlock, who were you talking too?” 

“I traced back the money, the plotting. Questioned the Professor, did my due diligence to Lestrade’s smug delight,” Sherlock’s fingers clenched around John like holding him tighter might solve everything, “and it all lead back...I don’t think I want to tell you, actually.”

“Sherlock, you’re scaring me.”

“You should be frightened,” Sherlock shook his head, dark curls tickling John’s nose, “I have half a mind to take you and run right now which is so bloody stupid I can’t stand it.”

“I’m going to shake you in if you don’t explain.” John warned, “Out with it.”

“It was my father!” Sherlock pulled back and his eyes were wild, “Donnell took a freelance job, did something completely out of order for his M.O. Why would he do that? Money, clearly, but from where? From who? The Professor is a nobody with delusions of grandeur. He couldn’t piece together the Westin murders, couldn’t have afforded to have it carried off.”

“Desperation though, it makes people do funny things.”

“Don’t bother looking for soothing lies, John. I’ve already confirmed it twice over. My father arranged it. He knew the Professor a long way back, before he ever met my mother. He played the strings for the hell of it, for fun. To mold that child into what he wanted. Another go around at his building of the perfect psychotic mind. And he did it all from solitary confinement,” Sherlock looked past John, looking into that other world that John could never penetrate, “I went there today. Talked to the guards, to the warden and they all swore there was no way he could have. I showed them the evidence, letters that the Professor had kept like a complete incompetent. They were baffled, of course. Empty headed fools, the lot of them. So I went to the source.”

“You talked to him,” John realized, “oh fuck, Sherlock why would you? Why didn’t you have me come with you at least?”

“I had to know. Right then and not when it was emotionally convenient,” Sherlock didn’t look at him, “he laughed at me. He...tied up, chained down, caught a hundred times over. And he laughed at me. Taunted me. As if he had the right.”

“Whatever he said to you, you have to know it isn’t true. You’ve won, Sherlock. You beat him a long time ago. He’s a pathetic loon rotting away in prison,” he tried not to think of Jim asleep in the next room, a victim of the supposedly neutered monster, “they’ll keep an even closer watch now.”

“I want him dead. He should be...it’s a crime that he breathes,” Sherlock’s gaze finally ripped from its otherworldly home and landed desperate on John’s face, “you know that I’m right.”

“There’s nothing you can do. You aren’t a murderer.” 

“I could be.”

“But you aren’t,” John said firmly, “you aren’t anything he wanted you to be and I can’t imagine a better victory than that.”

They rested against each other, breathing hard as if they’d run a marathon together.

“Bed.” Sherlock finally said.

They left the bread abandoned on the counter. John paused by the sofa to tuck the blanket more firmly around Jim. He seemed to be deeply asleep, undisturbed by the night's revelations.

Sherlock curled up around John as soon as they were both in bed. He clung as he hadn’t in years and John clung back. Work would start again in too few hours, but John couldn’t bring himself to care. All his annoyance at Sherlock was briefly banished and he wanted only to stay home to lick their wounds. 

“I will remain with Jim.” Sherlock muttered into the predawn light. “The case is finished. Lestrade insisted that I take a day off.”

“I knew I liked him,” John brushed a kiss over Sherlock’s forehead, “come by for lunch if you like. You won’t believe who I’m working with.”

“Molly Hooper.” Sherlock pronounced, “I saw her name come up for the position. Did she remember you?”

“Both of us. Left quite an impression at the time.”

“Clumsy. I’d do it better now.”

“We both would,” John sighed, “Moran would be in prison instead of dead.”

“That is not the better outcome,” Sherlock’s fingers tightened around John’s arms, “think John. Donnell was the lesser of the two. Moran...he was malicious for the sheer joy of it. In Jim my father tried to architect his successor. If he had Moran instead of Donnell, perhaps he would have succeeded.”

John tried to imagine the kind of man that Mycroft Holmes Sr. would wish to create. He tried to imagine that man being guided and watched over by Sebastian Moran. He gave that man the obscene intelligence that already glittered within Jim, waiting to be molded. Suddenly, a lot of Sherlock’s more recent choices made sense.

“Jim is the King,” he said, watching Sherlock’s face twitch with momentary confusion in the pre-dawn light, “I mean, in a chess sense. Mycroft said it was always chess with your father.”

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” Sherlock kissed John’s shoulder, draped an arm over him to pull him closer even as he lied, “I never bothered with the game.”

The morgue was downright soothing that morning. Molly across the metal table, a few careful instruments and the routine of measurement seemed neatly sane. 

“I’m going to get a cup of coffee,” she announced around eleven, “want anything?”

“No thanks,” he smiled, “mind if I use your office phone to make a call?”

The door to her office shut quietly behind him. He dialed the number by heart, counting the rings.

“Hello?” Her voice had gone frail over the years, breaking unevenly, but John still found it enormously comforting.

“It’s John. How are you, Amelia?”

“Miserable,” she growled, “the nurse is a condescending harridan.”

“It can’t be that bad,” he smothered a laugh, “and I thought you liked this one. No nonsense you said.”

“She’s gone too far. Started pureeing all my food,” Amelia sniffed, “I still have all my teeth, I’ll have you know.”

“Maybe you could bite her?”

“And have to listen to Mycroft berate me? He gets so world weary when I don’t act my age. How is Sherlock?”

“He’s...not all right. It’s why I called actually,” he stared at the desk calendar Molly had put up with its fluffy kittens romping through flowers, “I’m a little lost right now.”

“Tell me everything,” she said immediately, “I’m listening.”

With infinite gratitude, he did. Amelia would never be warm or emotional, but she always listened when John had a problem. Her advice tended toward the cooly practical and she wasn’t afraid to tell him when he was foolish. There was a weeping jagged hole in John where his mother should be and maybe Amelia didn’t fill it, maybe she didn’t even try, but she eased the hurt a little. 

“I want to meet the boy,” she said once he had finished, “and I want you to calm down.”

“I’m calm,” he leaned back in his chair, “or as close as I can be.”

“Good. Because that’s all you can do, right now. Be calm for them. Mycroft may not know it, but Sherlock isn’t the only one that depends on you for a certain amount of...reality, let’s say. He, Sherlock and Jim need you to be John. Can you do that?”

“I don’t think I can be anything else.”

“Then it should be easy.”

And oddly enough, it was. He spent the rest of the week cataloging bodies with Jim tucked away in Molly’s office once Sherlock returned to work. Dimmock stopped in to thank them for their dedication and to keep them updated. There were still no leads with forensics digging through too much evidence and not enough manpower.

At night, they shared meals while Sherlock talked about his newest case with his usual fervor and John enjoyed listening with the kind of enthusiasm that came from not breathing in the details every waking hour. At first he worried about Jim absorbing that kind of talk, but it seemed to spark something in the boy making him more animated. It was hard to deny that as a good thing.

“I’m meant to go around to my Mother’s tonight,” he realized afresh on Friday morning.

“Would you like me to tell her you died?” Sherlock asked, regarding him over the rim of a cup of tea that John had intended for himself.

“Only about thirty percent of me. Another forty would like to run away to America. We could take up new names, new lives, wouldn’t that be fun?”

“And the last thirty percent?”

John dropped his head into his hands. Sherlock’s arm went across his shoulders, pulling him in tight. They sat in silence as John trod well-worn paths in his mind and Sherlock remained still. The Sherlockian version of emotional support. It worked on John and sometimes, more interestingly, on Lestrade.

“You’ll watch Jim then.”

“We could all come,” Sherlock offered in a funereal tone.

“Best not. Could get ugly.”

So after a day of working wrist-deep in corpses, John showered and put on a nice shirt then set off to Emma Watson’s flat. She’d moved six years ago and it was the first time he’d been to the place. The street was quiet and clean enough. The window that was probably hers had a pleasant flower box filled with petunias. He lingered on the curb, tempted to turn back around.

“Oh thank god, you’re already here,” Harry came up behind him, linking her arm through his and squeezing it tightly, “I don’t want to go in there alone.”

“There’s a brave soldier,” he squeezed back and they went in together. The lift brought them soundlessly upwards and delivered them into a carpeted hallway that reeked of garlic.

“She’s cooking,” Harry groaned.

“Joy,” John took a deep breath before knocking.

“It’s open!”

John pushed tentatively inside and was immediately assaulted with nostalgia. The flat might be different, but the furnishings and knickknacks were the same. The same scarred linoleum table that he and Harry had shared noisy dinners, the same terrible floral couch that he and Sherlock had their first clandestine snogs and the same framed photos that froze he and Harry at sixteen and nine. In the pictures they looked lost, unsmiling and faded. All the photos from younger ages were lost to the fire and anything much later wouldn’t contain John at all. 

“What are you making?” Harry went into the kitchen and reluctantly, John trailed behind her.

His mother looked up from the stove, a weak smile appearing on her face. 

“It’s rice pilaf. Cindy gave me the recipe, says she swears by it,” she gave Harry a one armed hug, “Hello, Johnny.”

“Hi Mom.” He stepped forward to receive a bird light kiss on the cheek, “how are you?”

“Oh, you know. Same as ever.”

They settled around the table, gluey rice and bleached vegetables meandering around their fork tines. An uncomfortable silence blanketed the table, magnifying the sound of metal on ceramic. John suddenly longed for Sherlock’s presence. He would have cut through all the quiet and told them all what the others were thinking. The Watsons needed that kind of help. Left to on their own, too much went unspoken.

“Look,” he set down his fork when he couldn’t stand it anymore, “Harry is a grown woman. If she wants to join the army then I’m for it.”

“I agree,” his mother said quietly.

“What? After you read me that riot act!” Harry yelped, “What about all that ‘not my daughter’ bullshit?”

“I had a chance to think about and I talked it over with my therapist,” Emma didn’t make eye contact with either of them, “and I’m not proud of how I reacted. You’re a smart girl and I’m sure you’re making the right choice for you. You told me from the beginning that uni didn’t suit you.”

“It doesn’t,” Harry said firmly, shooting John a confused look. 

“That’s great,” he reached for his glass of water to wash the taste of the rice out of his mouth.

“I’ve been in therapy for a few months,” she continued, “and there are a lot of things that I’d like...that I think should be said.”

John stilled and across the table, Harry took in a sharp breath. 

“Your father was a difficult man, even before he lost his job,” she said each word slowly as if walking through a minefield, “I dealt with that by working long hours. Once he was gone, it seemed like that was the best thing I could do for the both of you. Keep us all afloat financially and never look back. And that wasn’t...isn’t the best that I can do.”

“You tried,” John can’t help, but add that in because he does remember the circles under her eyes and the careful budget they kept, “we always knew you were trying.”

“Johnny,” she put her hand over his, “I put too much on you. How could you turn out normal? I ruined you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he drew away, “I think I managed.”

“Right. So this has been super,” Harry got to her feet, plate in hand, “let’s never do it again.”

“Harry, please,” Emma reached out, Harry neatly evaded her hold, “I’m trying to-”

“What?” Harry dumped the plate, pilaf and all into the sink, “What are you going to do? Actually apologize for kicking John out of the house? For alienating him for years for who he is?”

“Harry, don’t,” John rubbed at his eyes.

“No! I’m not going to be quiet about this anymore,” she flung her arms open wide, “guess what, Mom? You must have fucked up twice because I’m a lesbian! And I’m not even as saintly as Johnny about it. I’m a raging slut!”

“Why would you say that?” Emma demanded, “What has gotten into you?”

“Oh, let’s see...Jane, Tanya, Melissa and oh this lovely redhead from a bar, who’s name I didn’t catch-”

“Alright! Well. This has been great,” John was on his feet, ready to head for the door.

“Harry, please...” Emma looked between the two of them.

“I’m not the good child, Mom. I never was.” Harry grabbed John’s hand, “and now you’ve lost out on both of us. So go back to your therapist and cry about that.”

“We’re not lost,” John corrected, trying not to watch his mother’s crumpling face or the tears starting to gather in her eyes, “I’ve never been lost. We’re here when you’re ready to take us as we are.”

“I love you,” Emma choked out, “but Lord only knows I don’t understand you.”

“I know,” he sighed and bent down to kiss her forehead like he would a child, “I feel the same way about you.”

Then they were out the door and back on the street. Harry started crying in ugly ragged sobs. John held her close, rubbing her back and muttering comforting nonsense. 

“C’mon,” he said when her tears started to dry, “let’s get some decent food in our stomachs.”

They ate fast food hamburgers as they made their way back to her dorm. They didn’t talk much, each locked in their own thoughts. The moon rose fat and bright, tracking their progress.

“This is me.” She chucked the last of the wrappers in a bin, “Johnny, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you come with me.”

“And miss the Coming Out party of the year?” He teased. “That was an impressive show of rainbow solidarity.”

“I meant it,” she frowned, kicking lightly at his shoe, “all of it.”

“We’re both pretty good adults, I don’t really care about being the kids she wanted any more. Do you?”

“Nah.” She flashed him a smile.

“Go get some sleep. Doctor’s orders.”

“Oh! That reminds me.” She fished in her bag and handed him a battered card, “I met this awesome woman at the library the other day. She’s an alumnus or something. Anyway, I was flirting which turned out to be a total dead end, but she got really excited when I mentioned my brother was a doctor. She’s trying to start up a new practice or something.”

“Right,” he looked at it quickly, taking in the ‘Sarah Sawyer’ before shoving it into his pocket, “you often mention me to prospective shags?”

“Yes,” she deadpanned, “my brother, turning women into lesbians since 1986.”

“Oh shut up.”

They parted laughing, but by the time John returned home, the weight of the evening had dragged him down again. It was nearing ten and he just wanted to trudge to his bed and collapse into it.

Jim and Sherlock were sitting on the floor, the guts of some poor machine spread out in front of them. Sherlock paused in the middle of explaining something as John came in, his fingers frozen in mid-arch.

“You survived,” Sherlock rose to gather John’s coat off his shoulders and hang it neatly next to his own. 

“Yeah, well. What’d you disembowel?”

“Alistar’s old home computer. He donated it to science.”

“You’ve got to stop menacing him into giving you things,” John settled next to Jim on the floor. He’d never seen the insides of a computer and wasn’t surprised to find them just as confounding as the workings of the fridge Sherlock had once dismantled, “amazing what all these bits and bobs can do.”

“I can build a better one,” Sherlock squatted down picking up a green plate covered in circuitry, “a good weekend project for Jim and I.”

“You want to build a computer?” John asked the boy.

“Yeah,” Jim said, voice thin as a whisper, “it’ll be brilliant.”

John grinned and glanced at Sherlock, who only raised an eyebrow before reaching for another intriguingly bent piece.

“We’ll need books and parts.”

“And sleep.” John cut in, “its late. They’ll be plenty of time tomorrow. Come on Jim, let’s get you settled.” 

For the first time in four years, neither John or Sherlock went into Scotland Yard over the weekend. The phone rang a few times, Molly with an interesting find that turned out to be nothing and Jennifer with a lead on the new case that Sherlock thoroughly eviscerated without so much as raising his voice. For the most part, they stayed in. Sherlock and Jim became invested in their computer project and on Sunday went out to the kind of shops that required specialized knowledge to even locate, returning with boxes of parts. Jim’s new found voice made only a few brief appearances, but each time it was a little bit louder and a little firmer. John didn’t attempt to help, but watched from the couch with a book open on his lap and his mind packed full. 

“You’re good with him,” John told Sherlock on Sunday night, watching Jim’s brow wrinkle as he looked over a diagram.

“I’m never good,” Sherlock corrected, but a pleased smile spread over his face.

“Oh, I can think of a few occasions when you’ve been downright fantastic,” John grinned and drew him into a warm embrace, pressing a kiss to his neck.

The weekend had been so tranquil that John was sure that everything would get blown to hell as soon as they returned to work. It wasn’t. Molly had made good headway on the bodies and also bought Jim a marble maze.

“Found it under my bed,” she laughed, settling the wooden toy on her desk with a friendly pat, “I must have moved it with me all these years and forgotten it was there.”

“Thank you,” Jim said softly, looking at it dubiously.

“Oh!” Molly lit up like a Christmas tree, “You’re welcome!”

Sherlock didn’t make it home for dinner. John cooked and taught Jim how to play Go Fish! which saw the boy inventing creative ways to get around talking. By the end of the evening they had a rudimentary sign language that would serve them well in an illicit poker game. Jim went uneasily to bed, glancing expectantly at the door the whole time. His nerves lit the dry tinder of worry in John and he picked up the phone as soon as he had Jim settled into bed.

“Lestrade.” The sharp greeting was it’s own kind of comfort.

“It’s John. Is Sherlock with you?”

“And in a fine mood. We’re staking out a comic book shop. It’s been hours,” Lestrade sighed, “himself has made two arrest attempts on citizens because they ‘looked guilty’.”

There was a muffled protest in the background and John smiled in pure relief.

“Put him on for a second?”

“I’m not your bloody receptionist,” Lestrade protested, but there was a brief pause and then Sherlock said,

“Were you worried?” with a mocking laugh in his voice.

“You’re meant to tell me when you aren’t going to make it home,” John chided, “I can’t deduct these things like you can. And Jim expected you home.”

“Did he?” A faint note of concern drifted in, “I’ll call next time.”

“Will you?” John grinned, “Miracles never cease. I love you.”

“Mhm.”

“Goodnight, Sherlock.”

“John?”

“Yes?”

“I promise.”

“Yeah,” John rubbed the heel of his hand over his chest, “me too.”

“Goodnight.”

Sleep was elusive, the empty spot in the bed next to him to obvious. Sherlock often avoided actual rest, but after a few early fights, he’d taken to lingering in the bedroom once John retired. The comfort of warmth and presence was usually enough for John to get over whatever odd things Sherlock brought with him into the bed. 

Around three am, the phone rang, spiking adrenaline through his system.

“Hello?”

“John. Check on Jim.” Sherlock ordered.

“What’s happened?” John climbed out of bed.

“Alexander Moriarty was released on his own recognizance this afternoon, pending trial.”

“What? Why?”

Jim was still tucked in a small ball under the blankets, a soft wheeze issuing from his nose with every exhalation.

“I have no idea, I only just found out.” 

“Jim’s alright. Sleeping sound.”

“I’ll be home soon. Get Mycroft’s birthday present.”

“Right.”

John got dressed and pulled the Sig from its hidden drawer, loaded it and slipped it into its shoulder holster. He moved as quietly as possible, listening carefully for any disturbances. Prepared, he settled down on the sofa bed next to Jim with the phone, ready for a long vigil. The boy turned in his sleep, his hand landing artlessly against John’s thigh. 

An hour later, worry had begun to return creeping in around the edges of his icy calm. The phone rang. He answered it quickly, watching Jim carefully.

“John, don’t panic,” Lestrade said sharply, sirens blaring in the background, “Sherlock’s fine, but he got winged by a bullet, nicked his thigh. Looks like it missed anything vital, but he’s too looped out on painkillers to fill out the forms. We need you to come to the hospital.”

“Was it someone from the comic store?” He struggled upward.

“Unknown,” Lestrade growled, “it was a drive by. Clipped him as he was getting out of the car to get a coffee.”

“Shit.” John swallowed hard, “alright. I’ll be right there. Don’t let them give him codeine, he’ll throw up.” 

“No codeine, got it,” Lestrade barked an order at someone, then put the phone back to his mouth, “it’ll be fine, John. See you soon.”

“Come on, Jim.” John shook the boy gently, “got to get up now.”

Jim murmured a sleepy protest, but he allowed John to wrestle him into a coat over his pajamas. John picked him up, juggling the weight in his arms and went into the street to hail a cab. It was raining in a fine mist, clinging to John’s eyelashes and hair. There wasn’t a car to be seen on the road and he was debating going back up to call a service when something sharp pierced through his back.

He went down hard, vision flickering in and out. Hands reached out, wrestling Jim from his weakened grasp and shoving him against the pavement. He took several ragged breaths, then pushed himself upwards. A dapper man with a pencil thin mustache held Jim close to his side, a knife, well coated in John’s blood, pressed to the boy’s throat.

“I’d advise you to stay down, Dr. Watson.”

“Get away from him,” John isolated the pain, noted it and shoved it from his mind. There was no time to worry about it. 

“He’s my son, Doctor,” the professor said mildly, “no one has more right to him then me.”

“The Westins might disagree,” he spat,”or did they have no right to him either?”

“Holmes gave him to me,” the professor stroked Jim’s hair. John searched the boy’s face for signs of fear or anger, but it had gone disquietingly blank. “entrusted him to me. It was an honor.”

A phone rang. The professor fumbled with his free hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a bulky cell phone. He said something into it quietly just as John got his hand around the butt of his gun. Jim’s eyes flickered over at the movement and John winked at him as he drew it from the holster.

“Let go of him. Drop the knife and the cellphone,” John ordered, training the gun on the professor.

“Why would I do that?” The professor looked over the gun, a faint flicker of unease passing over his face, “Anyway, it’s for you.”

The phone was lobbed at him and John snatched it from the air without thinking, then hissed at the pull on the stab wound. He kept the gun and his eyes firmly on the professor while he answered,

“Who is this?”

“Hello, Dr. Watson.”

“Mr. Holmes,” John pulled back the safety, a dark part of him relishing the fear growing in the professor’s eyes, “I’m a bit busy right now.”

“I suggest that you allow my colleague to depart with his son,” he had forgotten how like Sherlock the man could sound, perverting that velvet voice into a weapon, “it would really be the best for everyone involved, most especially yourself.”

“Thanks for the look out, but I’ll be fine.”

“Will you?” His amusement oozed out through the phone. “He’s my creature, Johnny. Just like Mycroft. Just like Sherlock. My ticking time bombs and you’ve surrounded yourself with them. But you could help yourself this one time. You won’t have to look into that child’s eyes at bedtime and see all the potential for pain that I’ve sown into him. You won’t have to wake up every morning wondering when the man next to you in bed or the child sleeping down the hall will turn into something unrecognizable. I’m good at making monsters, Johnny.”

“Yeah?” He laughed, “Well there’s a problem there, mate. I’ve been thinking. About chess.”

“Chess?”

“Oh yes,” John shifted his balance just so, watching the professor swallow hard, “because the way I see it, you’ve been checkmated.”

“I’ve got your lover in the hospital, a child at knife point and you’re bleeding out onto the sidewalk. I hardly think you’re in any position to win anything.”

“See you’ve based your moves on a faulty premise. You think I’m a pawn. But I’m the Queen, Mr. Holmes. I move where I want, when I need too and no one sees me coming,” he closed his left eye and took in one last solid breath, ignoring the searing pain in his chest, “you never did turn Sherlock into a killer, sir. I became one for him.”

He dropped the phone and fired. The bullet caught the professor solidly between the eyes and John leapt forward to pry Jim from his grasp before the body hit the ground. John pulled the boy into a tight hug. It wasn’t until he had his ear practically to Jim’s mouth that he could hear him quietly hyperventilating.

“You’re safe,” John stroked his back, “you’re going to be safe. No matter what happens, Jim, no matter who’s out there, I will never let anyone hurt you.”

They knelt there together in the rain, the body cooling behind Jim’s back until John’s vision started to waver again.

“Jim, I need you to go get me that phone.”

Jim pulled away reluctantly, trotting the few feet to the phone then returning to bury himself back in John’s arms. With shaking fingers, John dialed Lestrade’s number.

“Lestrade.”

“It’s John.”

“Are you on your way?”

“Not quite. I need two ambulances and probably quite a lot of officers here. I’ve been stabbed and I’ve shot my assailant. Jim was with me, he’s not hurt, but I think he’s going into shock. Could you call Mycroft? He’ll know someone trustworthy who can look after him.”

“Shit, John, how badly are you hurt?” 

“No idea,” he lied glibly. He rested his forehead on top of Jim’s forehead, “but a rush on the ambulance would be appreciated. Is Sherlock alright?”

“Fuck, Sherlock! He’s already pissing and moaning at me like nothing happened,” there was a pause, presumably Lestrade telling someone to get an ambulance, “Who stabbed you?”

“I’ll give you my statement once someone tapes me back together.” John closed his eyes, fighting against nausea, “I’m tired, Greg.”

“Don’t go to sleep, John. Kid needs you sharp until help gets there.”

“You got it, boss.” John let the phone fall away.

The ambulance arrived in minutes, but it felt like hours to John as he clung to consciousness by a thread. He kept himself aware by whispering senseless soothing things to Jim. The boy was definitely in shock, his skin cold and his breathing too quick. When the medics reached for him, the Jim clung all the harder and wouldn’t moved.

“Stab wound is on my back anyway,” John snapped, “do what you can without moving him.”

They did what they were told and it wasn’t until Mycroft’s black car pulled silently up behind the ambulance and the tip of a familiar umbrella hit the sidewalk that he allowed himself to sink into unconsciousness. 

When he woke the first time, it was to barked orders over a gurney and for a moment, he was back at St. Bart’s during his residency, having nodded off on his feet after a long shift. He struggled to apologize, but someone put a mask over his face and he drifted back to sleep again.

The second time he woke, it was to Sherlock’s hand wrapped too tightly around his upper arm, his face alarmed and eyes dark with panic.

“Sherlock,” John slurred, “what’s wrong?”

“John,” Sherlock sighed his name with clear relief, “never do that again, do you understand me?”

“Ok,” he wasn’t precisely sure what he’d done, actually, but it seemed best just to agree, “m’tired.”

“Go to sleep then,” Sherlock bent to kiss him, moving tubes and wires out of the way to do so.

It was in and out like that for a few days, information being slowly trickled into his morphine addled brain. The knife had dug into the muscle of his left shoulder, leaving a ragged tear behind. Twenty minutes had passed between the initial injury and his first medical treatment, giving his body plenty of time to pour out vital amounts of blood. Sherlock’s wound had been far less damaging though he’d have an interesting scar glancing across his right thigh. The professor’s death was considered self-defense and all mentions of charges for gun possession mysteriously disappeared. 

The room was private and visiting hours, while very loosely enforced, did have their limits. John had plenty of time to think in the quiet stretches. On his last night in the hospital, he turned to Sherlock and said,

“We have to talk,” A nurse rolled a cart with a squeaking wheel by the door. A half hour ago, Jim had climbed with great care into the bed, curling himself into John’s good side and falling into a deep sleep.

“About what?” Sherlock had pulled the visitor’s chair close to the bed, a book closed between his knees, ready for the moment John dropped back off to sleep.

“About who we are, Sherlock. How things are going to be from now on,” the words echoed loud, “because it’s going to be different.”

“You promised me,” Sherlock reached for his hand, gripping it with bruising strength.

“I’m not breaking my promise,” John brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing Sherlock’s knuckles, “I’ll never leave you, Sherlock. I don’t think I can now, even if I wanted too. You’re my vital organs.”

“Then what’s to talk about?”

“I’m not coming back to the unit. Not for awhile anyway. I want to work with the living again, it was my passion once.”

“You love forensics.”

“Yes, I do,” he’d miss his little office and rooming with the quiet dead. He’d miss Alistair’s anxiety attacks and Jennifer’s quiet confidence. He’d miss the thrill of the chase and the getting of their man, “so maybe it won’t be forever, but it needs to be for now.”

“I don’t understand,” Sherlock frowned, “if you love it and you’ll miss it, why would you leave it?”

“Because I need to sort out who I am when I’m not with you. I love you, so much...but there’s this man that I’ve become and I think I should get to know him,” he plowed on before Sherlock could object, “and if we’re going to adopt Jim then one of us will need regular hours and a less dangerous occupation.”

“If?” Sherlock’s eyes widened and John wondered how he couldn’t have understood before how much this meant to his lover.

“He’s ours.” John smiled, “You know once I’ve shot a person for someone, they’re stuck with me.”

“Your sense of humor seems to have also been horribly injured,” Sherlock said dryly, but his grip on John’s hand softened into something more like affection and he leaned down to kiss him, “What about the Mayfair case?”

“I’ve had my fill of serial killers,” he rubbed his nose against Sherlock’s, “time to try a quieter life. Let someone else catch him.”

John settled in for the next few weeks to heal at home. He used the downtime well, filling out adoption paperwork, hiring a frighteningly well pressed woman named Anthea as a tutor and starting talks with Dr. Sarah Sawyer about their prospective practice. He’d liked her from the first phone call and had high hopes for what they might build together.

When the wound on his back had healed enough to only a tight nuisance instead of a steady throbbing pain, he decided it was time. On a quiet Wednesday afternoon, he left Jim and Anthea deep in their physics books and took the familiar path to Scotland Yard. He took his time, enjoying the fresh air and buying a newspaper that he fully intended to read when he got home. When he climbed the stairs up to the Cold Case Unit, a pang of homesickness took him off guard.

“John!” Jennifer cried as soon as he walked in the front door, “look at you!”

“Oh, don’t, I’m a sad mess,” he laughed, embracing her, “did you get a haircut?”

“Yeah, do you like it?”

“It suits you. Very professional,” he carefully didn’t look at the pile of cases on her desk.

“You know himself isn’t here, right? Out sniffing around for that shooter of his.” 

“I know. I wanted to talk to Lestrade, actually. And Alistair if he can be spared.”

“Go have a knock then, I’ll go get Alistair.”

“Give us about five minutes alone first, alright?”

Lestrade’s door was ajar. John knocked anyway on principle before walking in.

“Are you meant to be up and about?” Lestrade narrowed his eyes as John dropped into the seat across the desk.

“Clean bill of health,” John assured him.

“Is this your resignation then? I’m not sure I want to accept.”

“No. I’ve talked to HR and I’m doing more of a sabbatical. One year at least away and we’ll see after that. Seems I’ve got a good record and they’re not eager to be shot of me.”

“I know we’re not. So is this a friendly visit then?”

“Not by any definition of the word, except that I need you as a friend quite badly.”

John explained what he wanted to do. Lestrade argued. Alistair came in, then nearly ran for the door when John told him what he needed. After talking him out of panic attack, John explained as rationally as he could how he had come to decide that this had to be done. Agreement came reluctantly from all corners, a pact of silence agreed upon and the plan set into motion.

By four o’clock the next day, a dark wig, subtle makeup and gap-toothed set of dentures taken from Sherlock’s disguise kits left John unrecognizable. A doctored warrant card that named him Detective Inspector Riley checked out easily against the Yard’s computer system. After a few phone calls, he was led to an interview room. 

Ten minutes after that, two burly guards brought in Mycroft Holmes Sr. and sat him on the opposite side of the table, attaching a chain from this handcuffs to the floor. Prison hadn’t been kind to Mr. Holmes. His once thick hair had gone thin and grey and his perfect porcelain skin rendered grey and greasy. But his eyes were exactly as John remembered them. They were Sherlock’s eyes, grey-blue and restless. They were Mycroft’s eyes, calculating and cold. They were John’s eyes in the mirror, steady and prepared.

“I’ll call you if I need you,” John said to the guards and they retreated behind the doors, making no bones about watching through the windows. 

“D.I. Riley, thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Holmes,” he reached across the table and shook one manacled hand. It was a long handshake, too lingering for John’s comfort, but absolutely necessary.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Mr. Holmes smiled in thin line, “I thought the police had finished with me.”

“I’m sure they have, but I haven’t,” John said softly. Alister had told him to speak as quietly as possible. The recorders in these rooms were cheap and would probably pick up no more than static.

“Ah,” those dangerous eyes raked across John’s face, recognition setting in, “why all the smoke and mirrors then? I took you as the direct type.”

“I think we can agree that you’ve made several wrong assumptions about me.”

“I’m hardly going to tell you anything, you must know that,” Holmes’ smile faded, “I’m not a movie villain.”

“There’s nothing you could tell me that I want to know,” John opened a folder full of missing persons cases and started to spread them out. Holmes had a lot of visitors like him, hoping he would identify bodies, put cases to bed. It would look good to the guards, to the cameras, “there are things I want you to know though.”

“Oh?” Holmes raised an eyebrow, “you must know you can’t appeal to my conscience.”

“There’s no appeal, sir. Only that you should know something. The adoption will be complete as of next week. Jim will be a Watson. James Westin Watson. And I’m going to take ample care to ensure that you never touch a single hair on his head again whether directly or indirectly.”

“And how do you propose to stop me?” Holmes tilted his head to one side like a curious animal, “I can reach through these walls and do anything I wish. You can hardly attack me here. Prison has become my greatest protection.”

“Yeah, terrible irony there, isn’t it?” John pointed to one of the photos at random, mugging for all watching eyes, “But it will work out, I think.”

“What will? Your cheap intimidation techniques?” Holmes snorted.

“No,” John opened his folder and started to pile the papers back in, “it’s a shame you were so uncooperative, Mr. Holmes. I must be going.”

“That’s it?” Holmes narrowed his eyes, “Cryptic comments? Surely you have a better move than that.”

“I would if we were still playing games. But I told you once already, Mr. Homes. You’ve been checkmated. Now I’m just clearing the board.” 

He went to the door and knocked twice to be let out. Leaving was more complicated than coming it, but a half-hour later he was safely back on the street. He washed away his disguise in a Pizza Hut restroom, carefully wadding the wig in wet paper towels. Then he took off the quirky antique ring that Lestrade had nicked from Evidence and flushed it down the toilet. He waited a minute and flushed again just to be sure. The doctored warrant card went into a skip filled with rotting food.

By the time he returned to the flat, nothing of where he’d been or what he’d been doing was evident on his person. He’d even made a point of walking through a muddy patch in the park by their flat to deter Sherlock’s usual dirt-based conclusions. 

He found Jim perched on top of the sofa, a blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He had a comic book open on his lap and he studied Batman’s profile with the same narrow focus he gave all of his studies. Sherlock was lying on the floor underneath Jim’s dangling feet, his hands steepled up by his lips.

“I can see I missed something,” John hung up his coat.

“I want to fly,” Jim informed him, leaping neatly from the top of the couch, over Sherlock and into John’s arms.

“I can find no logical way to make that happen short of hang gliding lessons which have strict age restrictions,” Sherlock said from the floor, “perhaps something less ambitious like a trampoline is in order.”

“Where are we going to put a trampoline?” John tossed Jim onto the sofa, where he bounced a few times then jumped to his feet and collected his comic book.

“No idea,” Sherlock glanced him over, “what’ve you been doing?”

“Looking at new flats,” he answered smoothly.

“What about Mrs. Hudson’s place?” 

“Not as long as that bastard husband of hers is still hanging around. I don’t know why she doesn’t press charges.”

Sherlock looked thoughtful and John decided not to ask. After all Mrs. Hudson’s flat was reasonably nice and she was a kind lady who didn’t deserve the man she’d married. 

“I’ll just make dinner then, shall I?”

“John.”

“Yes?”

“Where were you really?”

John knelt down on the floor to run a hand through Sherlock’s curls, then kissing him lightly.

“Getting your anniversary present.”

When the call came in hours later, he could see Sherlock putting the pieces together. But he never asked. Even when the autopsy reported the presence of tetrodotoxin in the body’s blood stream. Maybe he guessed it all. John’s use of the slapdeath ring loaded with the deadly neurotoxin, his reliance on Alistair to get him in and out as a ghost in the computer system and Lestrade’s painstaking coverup. The questions that John had steeled himself for simply never arrived.

Instead, he hung up and drew John into a tight hug and for the first time ever in John’s knowledge, Sherlock wept.

“Don’t cry,” John kissed his wet cheeks, “my God, Sherlock. Not over him.”

“Not for him,” Sherlock assured him, eyes red rimmed, “never. Only that it’s over between me and him and I’m not sure that I won.”

“You’re alive. You’ve got me and Jim and the weight of the British police force behind you. He’ll be an unmarked grave and a scary story for children from now on. I think you won, love.”

“Do you think so?” Sherlock searched John’s face as if looking for something hidden, something dangerous, “It’s hardly that simple.”

“It is if we let it be.”

Sherlock drew in a breath and for a moment, John was sure that this would turn into some kind of argument or the kind of conversation that could shake apart the foundation they had just started to rebuild. But Sherlock only exhaled slowly, then nodded.

“Just this once,” he announced, before dashing the last tear from his face, “and only because I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has come with me on this strange journey! There will be an epilogue fic posted within the next few days and perhaps a Mycroft/Lestrade coda if the muses are kind. 
> 
> Thanks again and I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
